Tennis: Next generation shines at Alpine Hills Junior

Legacy was a theme Wednesday afternoon at the Alpine Hills Junior Open in Portola Valley.

For starters, Mark Ball is the youngest of four boys, a quartet of tennis standouts that includes:

Jamin, who just completed his tennis career at Stanford.

Andrew, a sophomore at Harvard.

David, who will be a freshman at BYU.

And Mark is following in their footsteps.

"All of them have been in this tournament and have gone through the exact same thing," said Mark Ball, 15, who also has a younger sister.

"The Ball legacy," said Nathan Safran, 16, his doubles partner.

Both attend Menlo School in Atherton, winner of the past six NorCal boys tennis titles and a record 13 Central Coast Section championships.

Their familiarity played a role in a tight pro set against Woodside teammates Jose Lopez and Hal Tuttle in the quarterfinals of the boys 16 doubles bracket.

"I know just being with a teammate on the court just makes it so much easier," Safran said. "If you know the person, it's a lot more fun, of course."

"I know his game and he knows my game because we see each other," Ball said. "Tennis practices were like two hours after school every day, so we kind of knew how to win."

It didn't come easy in the tug-of-war with Lopez and Tuttle, who pushed the match to a tiebreaker. That's when Ball and Safran turned up the intensity, jumping out to a 5-2 lead before trading points to close the match 8-7(4).

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Ball credited Safran's serve for the victory.

"I wouldn't go that far," Safran said. "We definitely had some good points and they were good players, of course. I think my service we held the entire time, so that was good all the way through. And then we won those points in the breaker and that really set us ahead there at the end."

Speaking of legacy, Menlo junior Lane Leschly is one of the top singles players in CCS.

And while he wasn't at Alpine Hills, his younger brothers Bo and Finn joined forces to knock out the No. 1 seed in the boys 14 doubles quarterfinals in a pro set 8-6.

"My mom always says it doesn't matter about the seeds, just go out and play," Finn said. "So we just played."

The Leschly brothers took on Jeremy Hsu (Los Altos) and Sean Laidlaw (San Francisco) in another back-and-forth contest that required a near-perfect effort.

"We were volleying pretty well and hitting our groundstrokes," Bo said. "Our serve, or my serve at least, wasn't that great. But everything else was clicking."

"We just wanted it really bad," Finn added.

It helped that Bo, who will be a freshman at Menlo, and his 12-year-old brother, who is a seventh-grader, didn't let emotions rule on the court.

"It worked out today, I guess," Bo said. "But in previous tournaments, I think, we fight a little bit."

The Leschly brothers will face a pair 13-year-old eighth-graders in Timothee Berthier (Portola Valley) and Kendall Shaw (Palo Alto) in the semifinals today at 1 p.m.

Berthier and Shaw relied on poaching, with the player at the net pouncing on the ball, to roll 8-3 past two boys from San Mateo, improving on a chemistry built from playing a couple of tournaments together.

"After a point is finished, we tell each other, 'Good job,' or what to do after," said Berthier, who is French and for that reason his favorite player is Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. "Like how to fix that mistake."

Shaw is the No. 2 seed in the boys 14 singles bracket, where he held off Bo Leschly in the quarterfinals 6-3, 2-6 (11-9). He plays Aryan Chaudhary of Santa Clara in the semifinals today at 11 a.m. and must rely on his two big weapons.

"It would be my serve and my backhand," said Shaw, who plays on the ad side in doubles because of his strong backhand.

The proximity of the tournament was a topic of consensus for the boys.

"This is definitely a lot better," Bo Leschly said. "You don't have to sit for two hours in a car ride. And it's also nice to play local kids."

"It's so much easier and these courts are really nice," Safran said. "A lot of guys that live around here they like to play whatever is local. And, honestly, this is probably the most convenient tournament that there is run by USTA, for sure, in the Bay Area for us."